SSC CGL 2025 Tier-I · 15 September 2025, Shift 3 · General Awareness · Question 8 of 100

We transcribed this text from the pictures on a candidate's response sheet for this shift; the answer is the key SSC colour-marked on that sheet. Solution last reviewed 11 September 2026.

Where this paper and its answers come from

SSC does not publish CGL question papers or a public answer key. From 2025 the candidate response sheet prints every question and option as a picture, so the text here is transcribed from those pictures for this shift and checked against them independently; where the layout carries meaning, the picture is shown as well. Each answer is the key SSC colour-marked on that sheet. SSC released a tentative key for challenge and later its final one, both only to candidates behind a login, and the sheet does not say which of the two it carries. The solutions are written by UnlockIAS.

Which of the following best describes 'Arranged Marriage' by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni?

(a)Stories exploring immigrant life, cultural identity, and arranged marriage challenges.
(b)Historical novel on India’s independence movement.
(c)Fantasy saga blending mythology and politics.
(d)Scientific study of social customs and psychology

Answer

Why

Correct — A. Arranged Marriage is Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni's first collection of stories. Her own site says it focuses on immigrants from India caught between two worlds, women both liberated and trapped by cultural change.

Immigrant life and cultural identity are its stated subject, and the title supplies the third theme → option (a).

Why the others are wrong

(b)
Historical novel on India’s independence movement. — It is a story collection, not a novel. Divakaruni's Independence (2022) is a novel set during the 1947 partition of India.
(c)
Fantasy saga blending mythology and politics. — Its stories are realist, about women from India caught between two worlds. Myth is her Palace of Illusions (2008), the Mahabharat told by Panchaali.
(d)
Scientific study of social customs and psychology — It is fiction, eleven portraits of women on the verge of change, not a scientific study of customs or psychology.

Concept

Arranged Marriage was Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni's first collection of stories. It won an American Book Award, a PEN Josephine Miles award and a Bay Area Book Reviewers Award.

Its eleven stories follow women from India caught between two worlds: a young bride whose idea of California is shattered when her husband is murdered, a proud middle-aged divorcee set on succeeding in San Francisco.

The author's own site gives the book two different years, 1994 and 1995, so this card leaves the date out.

Key facts

Arranged Marriage is Divakaruni's first collection of stories, eleven in all.
It won an American Book Award, a PEN Josephine Miles award and a Bay Area Book Reviewers Award.
The Palace of Illusions (2008) retells the Mahabharat through Panchaali.
Independence (2022) is her novel set during the 1947 partition of India.

Study next

Divakaruni's The Mistress of Spices and Sister of My HeartThe Palace of Illusions and The Forest of Enchantments: epics retold by their heroinesIndian diaspora writers in English

Common traps

Matching the history or myth option to a different Divakaruni book. Her partition and Mahabharat novels are real, but they are not Arranged Marriage.

Divakaruni is also asked at 14 Sep 2025, 09:00, GA Q.9 (The Vine of Desire), again with a freedom-struggle decoy.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.

Topic: Culture — all 163 SSC CGL questions on it, every solved shift.